RHCDA

Northside Community Housing, Inc., the Riverview West Florissant Development Corporation, and the Ujamma Community Development Corporation are the winning recipients of RHCDA’s 2010 Opportunity Grants.

RHCDA recognizes that the financial support necessary for community development corporations (CDCs) to build organizational capacity and achieve community development goals is not as widely available as it might be.  To address this need, RHCDA’s CDC Capacity Building and Collaborative Grant Program Oversight Committee approved funding in 2010 to provide a limited number of competitive “Opportunity Grants” to selected CDCs.  Opportunity Grants were awarded to help CDCs complete a specific goal or neighborhood objective.

Northside Community Housing will be using its $15,000 grant for their efforts in helping area residents secure their first home mortgages; Riverview West Florissant Development Corporation will receive $10,000 for their Neighborhood Beautification Program which provides 75 neighborhood youth with employment opportunities and lawn care services to elderly and disabled homeowners; Ujamaa Community Development Corporation has been allocated $5, 000 for their project to improve healthy food knowledge and access in its service area.

Eight organizations were directly invited to apply for the grant funding.  These organizations were eligible as a result of either being a nonprofit community development corporation (CDC) working in one of RHCDA’s four “Partner Neighborhoods” or a nonprofit CDC currently receiving individualized capacity building technical assistance services from RHCDA.  The minimum requirements for the grant were: 1) a maximum of $15,000 would be awarded to any organization; 2) grants were limited to one per organization and would only be awarded for a single project or program; and 3) the project or program receiving the Opportunity Grant must be undertaken in 2010.

The organizations had to address the following criteria in their applications:

• How the proposed program or project supported the organization's mission
• What need did the organization hope to address with the planned program or project for which they were requesting funds
• Describing their plan and/or approach for carrying out the program or project
• A clear timeline to complete their planned program or project
• A detailed budget for the planned program or project
• How key staff and board members were to be involved in executing the planned program or project
• How they would evaluate the effectiveness of the project or program
• What outcome would they measure to determine whether the program or project has succeeded in helping the organization better address the need(s) of the community and its residents they serve
• Addressing how they would leverage RHCDA's Opportunity Grant funds to increase the scope of activity being funded.

Recipients of the Opportunity Grants will present the outcomes of their projects to the program’s Oversight Committee in the first half of 2011.

Funding for the CDC Capacity Building and Collaborative Grant Program is made possible by the generous contributions of Citigroup, Commerce Bancshares Foundation, Commerce Bank, First Bank, Kemper Foundation, National City/PNC Bank and Southwest Bank (Marshall & Ilsley Foundation).